the selenographer's lament

@themoondude

"you guys watch Joe Don Baker movies?" (he/him)

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Bluesky

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the selenographer's lament@themoondude· 20h

Picture of a man wearing glasses reading a book. Impact-font type reads "DISCO ELYSIUM FANS BE LIKE YOOO THIS GAMEPLAY IS FIRE"

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· 21h

"the average American male doesn't read books anymore" now, it's true i haven't read a full book in a long time, but have you seen the video games i'm playing???

Steam notification for owning 2 more games: Scarlet Hollow and Esoteric Ebb

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· 26d

imagine giving a shit about cia staffers oh, like, sure, there's a broader point about destabilizing careers and livelihoods, making them impossible to continue, but about the fucking cia? are you serious?? Do you have no fucking contextual understanding about the institution???

blacked out username posts: This is ultimately the same story as the Kansas driver's license thing. The word of the United States government is simply no good if you are a member of a minority Republicans do not like. Lucy will pull the football. You can't live a stable life like this.
pic reads: This type of radical transparency was encouraged across agencies. At the CIA, according to a trans staffer who was fired in the aftermath of the chat leak, employees are subject to regular security interviews where they're encouraged to reveal personal and private details about their lives. The idea is that if any foreign adversary tries to use those details to blackmail them, they can honestly say "work already knows." But things have radically changed since January.

"In this administration, however, that trust has been broken and these personal details are now being weaponized to either encourage employees to quit, or undergo an embarrassing Personnel Review Board to determine their suitability for continued employment," the former staffer said. "Some employees are being fired with no reason given at all, and contractors caught up in the net have even fewer protections."

Before their termination, they said they witnessed a new culture of fear and humiliation, where certain staffers were given confusing orders that made it impossible to properly perform their jobs, to suddenly having their security clearances revoked and being walked out of the building by security.

"One common thread runs through many officers' stories: They are queer," this former staffer said. "Some participated in Agency-sponsored Pride events, some were members of Agency Resource Groups, some were out and had told their story to encourage other non-straight employees."

They said they believe the CIA is going after behaviors it can reclassify as "unsuitable" instead of firing employees for their sexual orientation-which is illegal- and, "they've essentially stolen countless professional intelligenc

different blacked out username posts: If the US government was actually serious about overthrowing the Iranian government, it would be very useful to have CIA assets who can work with and in Iranian communities suppressed by their government.

But that doesn’t seem to be the objective of this war

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· 27d

🙂 it's me

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· 29d

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Jul 13

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Jul 12

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Jun 30

reddit post
A Conversation Between John Stuart Mill and John Locke on Natural Rights by [deleted] in philosophy

"It is determined by the law of nature that man should have rights to life, liberty, property... and affordable slaves, courtesy of the Royal African Company," he contended. "And I'll be gosh darned," he added, "if anything bad will ever happen to us, should this backwards-ass dualist conception of liberty as a function of property, modeled loosely after screwball Roman law horseshit, be used as the very basis for a civilized society."

...and nothing bad ever did.

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Jun 29

Picture of Lenin next to the paragraph: "Why should we bother to reply to Kautsky? He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply. There's no end to that. It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautsky is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything."

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Jun 10

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Jun 8

hmm

The three protagonists of Pathologic Classic HD slouched against each other on the ground, their eyes replaced with buttons

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· May 24

Illusion of free choice meme, with the paths labeled "Bluesky is good" and "Bluesky is bad," leading to the outcome, "Another three years of Three Houses discourse for some reason."

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· May 21

yeah, everywhere you look in the system you'll find misallocations of power and responsibility like this. It's not very well-designed! given that you believe one vote is equivalent to another, anyway. A bunch of people, more than i expected, don't think this!

Anil Dash @anildash.com
Zohran got more votes than 50 sitting U.S. Senators did.
quoting Taniel @taniel.bsky.social
one member of Los Angeles County's board of supervisors has more constituents than the U.S. senators of 12 states

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· May 9

i know what they're asking but it does seem like a question out of a cosmic horror story

ELI5 How is there so much meat [Planetary Science]
submitted 8 hours ago by Due_Imagination_9663 to r/explainlikeimfive
276 comments

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· May 6

lol this is technically a spoiler for signalis

excerpt from The King in Yellow short story Prophet's Paradise, a collection of smaller tone pieces

THE SACRIFICE

I went into a field of flowers, whose petals are whiter than snow and whose hearts are pure gold.

Far afield a woman cried, “I have killed him I loved!” and from a jar she poured blood upon the flowers whose petals are whiter than snow and whose hearts are pure gold.

Far afield I followed, and on the jar I read a thousand names, while from within the fresh blood bubbled to the brim.

“I have killed him I loved!” she cried. “The world’s athirst; now let it drink!” She passed, and far afield I watched her pouring blood upon the flowers whose petals are whiter than snow and whose hearts are pure gold.

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· May 5

i don't remember writing this down (alt text cont: these are all the methods of control he is finally shaking off, ending with iwazaru, the voice of kun lan directly in his ear, which gives him the context of what he's doing)

rave on: party music in a liminal space
the liminal space in the game world, the vinculum gate, acts to separate specific zones from the rest of the world (render them sacred)
within these zones, the player kills new creatures
but why party music? because the act of killing for the killer7 is joyous, it is something they both excel at and want to do
on a meta level, it's also something the player wants to do and is good at: the game can be puzzle-solving but is most often shooting things
and all these zones force you through an area called the collosseum to get to them
on a story level, the killer7 are all emir parkreiner, one of the world's great assassins, so it is also something he excels at and wants to do, esp. against monsters
so the party music is there to affirm the base instinct to kill in both emir and the player. This is where you celebrate. This is where you most belong.
To get there, you must pass the vinculum gate, which requires paying for a ticket by solving puzzles in the real world, learning more about the world around you
to kill, to do what you want to do, you must learn more of the world, so you can kill its novelties
the party music speaks to apathy about this side of you: don't worry about what you're doing. Party. Enjoy yourself.
hence why the vinculum gatekeeper is almost impressively neutral and boring, robot-like: he's not here to keep you down or lift you up, he is here to get you to pay the proper toll, so you can enjoy yourself
the collosseum and the vinculum gate are, structurally, the means of controlling emir parkreiner, and in the game structure break up puzzle sections from mini-boss sections, and one part of a stage from another. Hence, as the boundaries blur between parkreiner and the ghosts of the killer7 in the later levels, the vinculum gate doesn't appear as often, and eventually parkreiner visits the collosseum in the material world. It links back to the trailerhouse not because he's insane (although he is), but because

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· May 5

Nevertheless, he said, "it confirmed my underlying theory about what was going on. These were a group of entirely self-satisfied American liberal elites who were enacting a morality tale in which Sheen and The West Wing and that whole highly sentimental vision of power and politics is a central device. She says this, I think, meaning to sound tough, like, 'I'm the warrior. Who are you? You're just some desktop guy.' Which just shows how little she understands what I'm saying, which is: 'You people are a bunch of sentimental schmucks who don't understand that you lost. If you had any self-respect, you would not be on any podium again, ever, sounding off about anything. Because comrades, if we were in the 30s, I would have taken you out and shot you. You fail like this, you don't get to come back and show off your wounds."

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 29

MGS codec call between Rose and Raiden in his scuba mask
"Do you know what day it is tomorrow?"
"April 30th -- is there something special about it?"

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 29

remembering back in the first year or so of the biden admin, calls to pack the court being tsk'd-tsk'd as unserious policy (not by this OP specifically, in general)

JOIN THE COMMUNIST PARTY
Predict everything so early that people call you crazy!
It's like a super power that makes you sad!

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 27

tvtropes entry
Allegorical Character: Per Akira Toriyama, Frieza is an amalgamation of everything Toriyama found frightening as a child. Specifically, Frieza is based on real-estate agents during Japan's economic bubble, afraid that he would get his house taken as a kid. This is reflected in how the Planet Trade Organization works with their Rape, Pillage, and Burn before selling them to other aliens that he most likely displaced himself. Frieza himself is basically a real-estate mogul, but on a universal scale who will kill your entire race along with your planet if you don't submit. Now think back to his destruction of planet Vegeta which displaced Goku, Vegeta and the other Saiyans...

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 24

"oh i can't play from software games, they make them too hard" me playing fromsoft games:

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 14

watched these on the false pretext they would serve as an exemplar of pop culture, an overpreparation for future schlock, and turns out these movies aren't popular except among a cult of weirdos so now i say i watched them because of my idiom didn't have to take notes though, don't know why i did

rebel moon part 2
--are they really opening the second movie with another fucking sex scene
--giant monsanto commercial/music video/slo-mo interpretive dance
----if there aren't particles or particle effects flying through the air, can a scene in a movie really have happened
--we are 50 minutes in and a solid 15 or 20 minutes has been slo-mo
--wtf is up with this robot
--in a word, these movies are turgid
--okay the living reactor got up and explicitly forgave the protag?? in a vision? and i guess we're setting up more sequels
--robot just took out a tank battalion on its own, and y'know the action's cool but everything around it is bland
--okay seriously? the main gun can aim at the bridge of its own ship? how fucking idiotic
--THE PRINCESS IS ALIVE despite being shot in like the first 20 minutes, sure she only glowed but still
--zack snyder saw lord of the rings and took from it that occasionally you have a song for no good reason

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 11

oh we're getting places

Picture of the evolution of primates to humans in silhouette

Imagine if humans, rather than being the generators of consciousness, were in a sort of a parasitic relationship with it. What if the consciousness was an underlying, inseparable factor of reality, existing outside of and unconditioned be human brains.
WE KNOW ANIMALS DON'T POSESS CONSCIOUSNESS

How did humans come about it and why does PROFESSOR Ribkin find the word POSESS to be inaccurate in this context?
The existence of the hard problem of consciousness (LOOK HERE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness), among other things suggests that consciousness, in fact, cannot be understood through traditional scientific means. A corellation between electric impulses and conscious phaenomena is evident, yet how can we even begin to categorize the raw feelings? (LOOK HERE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia)
Qualia, OBVIOISLY, cannot exist outside the context of a

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 10

I'm not accusing anybody of anything, more just thinking out loud so i stop thinking about it in my head. But it helps to notice such things. That way you can say, whenever anybody brings up your critical attitude to media:

Matt @blackmilosevic
I love when people say "you call everything you don't like fascist". Buddy, I even call plenty of stuff I do like fascist
6:51 PM - Aug 21, 2020

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 9

#AppomattoxDay

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 2

probably not the most applicable but i definitely identified with it more than any other

@DVSblast
You call this a "hint" of lime you fucking fascist? This is a fucking book of revelations of lime. #Tostitos

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Apr 1

@acollierastro.bsky.social sorry to bother you, but just finished your faust and furious vid and was reminded of this ancient twitter exchange

screenshot of twitter chain
Jonathan Coulton @jonathancoulton: Just got all choked up listening to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Not at all sure what to make of that.
He really was the best that's ever been. [three sobbing emojis]
That chicken TRULY LOVED bread pan dough. [three sobbing emojis]
Kevin Murphy @kwmurphy: Why was the chicken in the bread pan in the first place?

chain follows the previous, all posts by Paul F. Tompkins @PFTompkins
And he cheats in the most insane way: WITH AN ELECTRIC GUITAR.
Like, he is clearly playing a guitar for his portion of the FIDDLE-OFF.
Then. THE FATHER OF LIES says, "Well, you won."
There is NO JUDGE. Johnny is in a contest with SATAN that is resolved by THE HONOR SYSTEM.

the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Mar 17

actually, it is

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the selenographer's lament@themoondude· Mar 14